Cryptopsaras couesii

 

Down in the body-lit night-sodden sea,

somber, sub umbra, I’m this tiny restless

inchling, a mere appendage, a would-be

 

hanger-on. Dimorphic nub-end, destined

to be a rudder attached to some underside.

I blunder the deeps—I nose around for

 

this blubbering fish out of Bosch, mega-

mouthed she-goblin, face flush with cicatrix,

visage like the dehisced petals of a rose.

 

I give her my slobbering heartbalm, my brain-

milk, my id & my will, a latecomer who stumbles,

who sleep-talks an epilogue, out of his depths,

 

while auras swim through my skull; all my life

—short as it is—I have searched for this

caruncled giantess, this alluring hulk, her utter

 

flesh darkened a beauty-marked mole. I taste

her ripe spinules. My little jaws gawp & hold

her, molting their teeth, the brink of me un-

 

slurries & folds, pickles in her brine, dis-faced

with pincher-like denticles in pure unbecoming,

bound tight, dreamfast & identical, made one

 

with my host, flooding my stuff in her tissue,

gutting out the mere self, poor serf I once was:

lost in oceans of laboring blood, a single pulse,

 

among a brood filled with germ, each milting

away, milked of their gunk, ceded as seed, as

spume spent by whims of her luminous sweep.